Jacques Derrida = Manah-Manah

I can’t do it.  I just can’t do it.  I am not even ashamed to admit that I can’t do it because I feel like there are millions of other people in the world that also can’t do it. 

Oh. What is it you ask?  It is reading Eric Prenowitz’s translation of Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever. I can do it.  I buckle down and really try for two whole pages but by the third page I am skimming and the fourth page I am reading the begging and ends of paragraphs.  I am looking for the part of the book with the little red hammer that says “In case of emergency break glass” because I am about to set this book on fire.

My brain is not allowing me to read this book.  It gloms on to some of the words it knows but struggles to make sense of them in combination with a never ending sentence structure.

It is times like these when I wonder if I will be able to teach graduate students at a research 1 school.  What am I going to say when a graduate student asks me what Derrida was saying when he was talking about archival violence? “Oh well, I don’t actually know what Derrida was saying because my brain refused to read him.”  NOT HELPFUL!

I feel like I can place some blame on my lack of Freudian knowledge.  When it comes to Freud I am probably smarter than a 5^th grader but just don’t put me on Jeopardy.  Freud is all about the id, the ego and the super ego ( I don’t know what that means) and he loves to talk about penis envy.  Other than those general tid-bits, I got nothing. When the book is entitled Archive Fever : a Freudian Impression it is probably good that you know a little bit more about Freud. 

There is just so much to know and there is no way of ever knowing all of it.  I am just tired today.  It is less of a sleepy tired and more of a brain tired.  It’s the October slumps and everyone seems to need a break. Hopefully I can finish writing my one act today and have tomorrow to get it together.

I really wish this post could be more constructive but I actually don’t feel that bad that I miss the mark with Derrida.  I don’t know if that is because I am in denial or if it is because I have so many other things in the world to worry about that Derrida is pretty low on the list.

As a matter of fact, it is a little freeing to let this one go. Let go and let Derrida.